#the journey to Ende continues

[ordinaryoffensivemagic]

Sousou no Frieren E. 28 - Post-credit Scene

[largeonions]

so you won't be alone

[pokeberry5]

here, wait—take this!

(a mulletwing <3)

[lunarharp]

played dragon age 2...just simple scribbles

[rainboweemart]

26th!! 🏴‍☠️☀️

Belated ONE PIECE day!! 🎉

[mayashesfly]

An important thing about Vox in Forgotten Radio AU is that Vox has agency.

He chose to forget Alastor. And chose to ensure he'll stay forgetten and never get close to him again by erasing any of his short-term memories about Alastor.

In an ironic twist of most Amnesia Scenarios, the one with Amnesia is the one who's in control. Whilst Alastor has no control over Vox even in this state as he can never make an impact on him that'll stick with enough time because he doesn't have time.

It's impossible for Alastor to become anything more than a fleeting thought to be forgotten the next day for Vox.

And it's frustrating that he can't do anything to control this. To fix this. To mend this.

It was like being stuck in a deadend with no possible way to escape.

However, Vox does slowly slip.

Ever so slowly, he starts to remember more about Alastor beyond the context clues he can collect about Alastor before he eventually forgets him yet again.

The fact that he was a part of the hotel.

The fact that he was the Radio Demon.

The fact that—

Well.... That part eludes him.

But it's certainly strange that Vox started to seem like he was remembering him bit by bit.

Alastor tried not to hope much.

But how he dearly missed the old Vox.

How he dearly missed not feeling this strange ache in his chest whenever he sees Vox forget him yet again instead of feeling the exhilaration his attention gives him.

He could only wish that he can take that back.

[mizgnomer]

Behind the Scenes - The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End (Part 23)

Excerpts from the November 2008 Telegraph Magazine article:

There is something undeniably curious about listening to someone speak of their lifelong admiration for an alien. Along with Tennant’s desire to act, his love for the show is something else that never seems to have faltered. What is it about the Doctor, I wonder, that has instilled such commitment, for want of a better word.

“I saw it as futuristic and scientific and at the same time all a bit hand-knitted,” Tennant says. “Something about that appealed. It always felt he only needed a ball of string to save everything. And, of course, this great character, who just burns through the middle with enthusiasm and glee and you can absolutely trust him and yet you can never quite predict what he’s going to do.”

Catherine Tate thinks part of Tennant’s success with the role is due to his being "such a fan of the show - his knowledge is really surprising. Because he does remember all these things, and he would really revel when we’d get a script where, say, the Sontarans were back, or there was some alien who was last seen in 1972. I think there’s never a moment when he’s not relishing it, and even now nearly four years down the line he relishes it, and attacks it and never tires of it, and so that makes everybody raise their game.”

Link to [ part one ] of the Stolen Earth/Journey’s End Behind-the-scenes posts or click the #whoBtsStolen tag, or the full episode list [ here ]

[willowser]

okay last thing and i know this is easier said than done and i think it's less of final end point and more of a continuous journey but once you let go of your shame and embarrassment over the things that make you happy, you'll have a lot more fun

[startswith0]

Frieren and Conan collab! for 2023 giveaway event in Shogakukan magazine

Both among my favorite series!! 💙✨🤍

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

obligatory rock murder mention

[liaragaming]

DO NOT give me Journey's End for Solavellan

We all know how Solas's character is based on the 10th Doctor, right? And we all know how the romance between the 10th Doctor and Rose ends, right?

She ends up with his clone while he goes back to his lonely ass time travel life without her.

Sure, she's happy - I guess? I mean, this is a clone of the man she loves. The one she actually loves just walked away so...

And he doesn't get what he wants at all.

Can we all agree that this is a terrible ending?!?!

And all of the takes of:

What if Solas dies, but he comes back as a spirit? Like what he says in his personal quest about his friend, Wisdom! Something of his essence will regenerate but won't have his memories or baggage. So, he can finally be with Lavellan!

This is the SAME sh*t ending! It's a BAD ending! NO!

I want Solas - the Solas we know now, today - to be happy! Not some clone / spirit essence of him!

And I want Lavellan to be with him - not someone that only resembles him and is in essence an entirely different person!

Let Solas - the actual Solas - and Lavellan ride off into the sunset together, goddammit!

[ordinaryoffensivemagic]

No official announcement yet but the message at the end of the post-credit scene most likely means that there are plans for a second season.

For those who haven't read the manga, I highly recommend reading it. There are currently 127 chapters released (more than enough material for a second season). Season 1 adapted the manga through chapter 60.

I really hope they keep the same animation team and don't rush the production because Season 1 was a masterpiece.

[dribs-and-drabbles]

The t-shirts are definitely t-shirting...

"C HERE"

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

[blueskittlesart]

any thoughts on how once again zelda was robbed of her agency because her "father figure" didn't listen to her? even if rauru was kinder to her than her father. and that she had sonia who was patient and loving for a little while before she died (just like her mother). i know rauru apologizes for his hubris but still, i wish we saw zelda be upset about it. and even if zelda was such a big part of the quest she still literally sacrificed her humanity once again because of someone else's mistake- because rauru literally didn't listen to the girl from the future that warned you that shit was going to go down. o know nintendo just loves putting zelda inside crystals and stones but i wish we got something better. even if it was her decision to become a dragon... did she have any other choice? it really just feels like they robbed her of agency again just like botw and the games before

i've been trying to figure out how to answer this one. because there are two ways i could analyze this plot point, either from a writer's perspective or an in-story perspective, but neither of those lead to me fully agreeing with your interpretation? I think there's definitely something to be said about zelda consistently being pushed aside in these games, but. well. ok let's get into it ig

from a writer's perspective, I do honestly have quite a bit of sympathy for the zelda devs as they attempt to navigate the modern political landscape with these games. The cyclical lore, though canonized relatively recently, holds them to a standard of consistency in their games in terms of certain key elements. one of those key elements is that there has to be a princess, and that princess must somehow be the main macguffin of the game. The player must chase her, and the end goal of the game must be to reunite the player and the princess. In 1986 this was an incredibly easy sell. women didn't need to be characters. players were content with saving a 2-dimensional princess whose only purpose was to tell them "good job!" at the end. but as society advances, that princess becomes a much more difficult character to write while adhering to the established overarching canon. (as a side note: i don't necessarily believe that the writers SHOULD be held to the standards of that canon. I think deviating from it in certain areas would be a good change of pace. but i also recognize that deviations from the formula are widely hated by the loz playerbase and that they're trying to make money off these games, so we're working under the established rule that the formula must be at least loosely adhered to.) Modern fans want a princess who is a person, who has agency and makes decisions and struggles in the same way the hero does. but modern fans ALSO want a game that follows the established rules of the canon. so we need a princess who is a real character but who can ALSO serve as a macguffin within the narrative, something that is inherently somewhat objectifying.

the two games that i think do the best job writing a princess with agency are skyward sword and botw (based on your ask, our opinions differ there lol. hear me out) in both games, we have a framing event which seperates zelda and link, but in both games, that separation was ZELDA'S CHOICE. skyward sword zelda runs away from link out of fear of hurting him. botw zelda chooses to return to the castle alone to allow link the time he needs to heal. sksw kinda fumbled later on by having ghirahim kidnap her anyway, but. i said BEST not PERFECT. botw zelda I think is the better example because, with the context of the memories, she's arguably MORE of a character than link is. we see her struggles, her breakdowns, her imperfection, specifically we see her struggle with her lack of agency within the context of the game itself. when she steps in front of link in the final memory, and when she chooses to return to the castle, those are some of the first choices we see her make almost completely free of outside influence; a RECLAMATION of her agency (within the narrative) after years of having it stripped from her. from an objective viewer's standpoint, this writing decision still means she is absent from 90% of the game and that she has little control over her actions for the duration of the player's journey. however I think this is just about the best they could have done to create a princess with agency and a real character arc while still keeping the macguffin formula intact--you're not really SAVING zelda in botw. SHE is the one that is saving YOU; when you wake up on the plateau with no memories, too weak to fight bokoblins, let alone calamity ganon. the reason you are allowed to train and heal in early-game botw is because SHE is in the castle holding ganon back, protecting YOU. When you enter the final fight, you're not rescuing zelda, you're relieving her of her duty. taking over the work she's been doing for the past hundred years. in the final hour, you both work in tandem to defeat ganon. while this isn't a PERFECT example of a female character with agency and narrative weight, i think it's a pretty good one, especially in the context of save-the-princess games like loz.

as for totk, you put a lot of emphasis on rauru not believing zelda and taking action immediately, which, again, from an objective standpoint, i understand. but even when we're writing characters with social implications in mind, those character's actions still need to... make sense. Rauru was a king ruling over what he believed to be a perfectly peaceful kingdom. zelda literally fell out of the sky, landed in front of him, claimed to be his long-lost granddaughter, and then told him that some random ruler of a fringe faction in the desert was going to murder him and he had to get the jump on it by killing him first. the ruler which this girl is trying to convince rauru to wage an unprompted war on has the power to disguise himself as other people. no one in their right mind would immediately take the girl at her word. war is not something any leader should jump into without proper research and consideration, and to rauru's credit, he DIDN'T ever outright dismiss zelda. he believed her when she said she was from the future, he allowed her to work with him and he took her warnings as seriously as he could without any further proof. but he could not wage an unprompted war on ganondorf. that's just genuinely not practical, especially for a king who values peace among his people as much as rauru seems to. as soon as ganondorf DID attack, giving rauru confirmation that zelda's accounts of the future were real, he began making preparations to confront him. remember that zelda didn't KNOW that rauru and sonia were going to be casualties of the war--she didn't make the connection between rauru's arm in the future and rauru the king until AFTER sonia's death, when rauru made the decision to attack ganondorf directly. I think the imprisoning war and the casualties of it were less an issue of zelda being denied agency and more an issue of no one, including zelda, having full context for the events as they were unfolding. if zelda had KNOWN that sonia and rauru were going to die from the beginning and was still unable to prevent it that would be a different issue, but she didn't. none of them did.

I think another thing worth pointing out with rauru and his death irt zelda is that rauru is clearly written specifically as a foil to rhoam. this is evident in how he treats both zelda and link, with a constant kindness and understanding which is clearly opposite to rhoam's dismissiveness and disappointment. consider rhoam's death and the circumstances surrounding it. He died because, in zelda's eyes, she was unable to do her duty; the one thing he constantly berated her for. Rhoam's death solidified zelda's belief that she was a failure, a belief which she KNEW rhoam held as well. his death was doubly traumatic to her because she knew he died believing it was her fault. Now contrast that to the circumstances surrounding rauru's death. Rauru CHOSE to die despite zelda's warnings, because he wanted zelda and his kingdom to live. rauru's death was not agency-stripping for zelda; in fact, it functioned almost as an admission that he believed her capable of continuing to live in his place. With him gone, the fate of the kingdom fell to her and the sages. he KNEW that he would die and still went into that battle confidently, trusting zelda to make the right decisions once he was gone. where rhoam believed zelda incapable of doing ANYTHING without link, rauru trusted zelda COMPLETELY with the fate of his kingdom. several details in totk confirm that when rauru died there was no plan for zelda to draconify, that all happened after rauru was gone. it was HER plan, the plan which rauru trusted her to come up with once he was gone. and I think it's also worth noting that zelda's sacrifice with the draconification parallels rauru's!! Rauru gives up his life trusting the sages and his people to be able to continue his work in his place. Zelda gives up her physical form trusting link and the sages in the future to be able to figure out what to do and find her. these games in general have this recurring theme but totk specifically is all about love and trust and reliance on others. zelda relies on link, link relies on zelda, they both rely on the champions and the sages and rauru and sonia and they all rely each other. reliance on others isn't lack of agency, it's a constant choice they make, and that choice is the thing which allows them to triumph.

The draconification itself is something i view similarly to zelda's sacrifice in botw--a choice she makes which, symbolically & within the confines of the narrative, is a demonstration of her reclaimed agency and places her at the center of the narrative, but which ALSO removes her from much of the player's experience and robs her of any overt presence or decisionmaking within the gameplay. again, I think this is a solution to the macguffin-with-agency dilemma, and it's probably one of the better solutions they could have come up with. Would I have liked to see a game where zelda is more present within the actual gameplay? yes, but I also understand that at this point the writers aren't quite willing to deviate that much from their formula. the alternative within the confines of this story would be to let zelda DIE in the past, removing her from gameplay ENTIRELY, which is an infinitely worse option in my opinion. draconification allowed her to be present, centered the narrative around her, and allowed the writers to reiterate the game's theme of trust and teamwork when she assists the player in the final battle, which i think was a REALLY great choice, narratively speaking.

In any case, I don't think it's right to say that zelda was completely robbed of her agency in botw and totk. Agency doesn't always mean that she's unburdened and constantly present, it means she's given the freedom to make her own choices and that her choices are realistically written with HER in mind, not just the male characters around her, and I think botw/totk do a pretty good job of writing her and her choices realistically and with nuance.

[ardentadoration]

“Introduction to the Snow” by Miracle Musical is astronaut Yoo Joonghyuk floating in space, pushed forward by the vain hope of spreading Kim Dokja’s story

Alone at the edge of a universe humming a tune, with sparkling crystal souls aglow.

(YJH’s Stories disintegrating around him as he relies on reading KDJ’s journey to survive)

A part of thee in the key of what we know to be every part without me.

(I see you in everything around me)

Knows only two can make it light. You’ll live forever tonight.

(You can’t do this alone, I’ll do the impossible make sure you live)

[anonyanonymouse]

It's a shame that rook and epel went back to their dreams because I really did want to see Silver dream hopping with The Entire Cast On His Back